Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Jim and Alice Walton Drop $200K to Support (In Part) La. BESE Candidates Kira Orange-Jones and Preston Castille | deutsch29

Jim and Alice Walton Drop $200K to Support (In Part) La. BESE Candidates Kira Orange-Jones and Preston Castille | deutsch29

Jim and Alice Walton Drop $200K to Support (In Part) La. BESE Candidates Kira Orange-Jones and Preston Castille

Well. It was too good to be true to believe that the Waltons would stay out of Louisiana’s October 12, 201,9 BESE election.

On September 13, 2019, billionaire siblings and Arkansas residents Jim and Alice Walton each contributed $100K to the Louisiana PAC operated by NY-based Education Reform Now (ERN) Advocacy.

Among the 21 candidates ERN Advocacy PAC is promoting are two BESE candidates: Teach for America (TFA) exec director, Kira Orange-Jones (Dist 2) and Baton Rouge lawyer, Preston Castille (Dist 8).

Donating on September 13, 2019– one day after “30 days prior to election”– allowed the ERN Advocacy and the Waltons to keep the news out of the public eye until 10 days prior to election. (The Walton donation was made public in ERN Advocacy’s October 02, 2019, filing.)

The Waltons push for charter schools, vouchers, and TFA, including Louisiana’s chief TFAer, John White.

Alice and Jim Walton

Jim and Alice Walton Drop $200K to Support (In Part) La. BESE Candidates Kira Orange-Jones and Preston Castille | deutsch29

Interested in scheduling Mercedes Schneider for a speaking engagement? Click here.

Want to read about the history of charter schools and vouchers?

School Choice: The End of Public Education?

(Click image to enlarge)

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of two other books: A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?. You should buy these books. They’re great. No, really.

Don’t care to buy from Amazon? Purchase my books from Powell’s City of Books instead.

Jim and Alice Walton Drop $200K to Support (In Part) La. BESE Candidates Kira Orange-Jones and Preston Castille | deutsch29

NYC Public School Parents: Imagine schools: corporate-style reform rearing its head once again

NYC Public School Parents: Imagine schools: corporate-style reform rearing its head once again

Imagine schools: corporate-style reform rearing its head once again

On Thursday, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza announced a new $32 million initiative, called “Imagine Schools NYC”, described as a “Public-Private Challenge to Open 20 New Schools and Transform 20 Existing Schools Across 5 Boroughs”. A competition was announced for teams to submit their ideas for new or redesigned public schools, with winners to be announced in May 2020 and these schools to open in 2021 or 2022.

According to this press release from the Mayor's office, the Robin Hood Foundation will contribute “up to $5 million to support the creation of up to 10 new Imagine Schools” and the XQ Institute, will contribute another $10 million to create 10 new or redesigned public high schools. Presumably, this means DOE will itself be putting in an additional $16 million to create or restructure another twenty schools.

Robin Hood is also spending $1M to expand the DOE’s District-Charter Partnership work, “centered on proven, effective professional development,” as well as spending up to $10 million for 18 new charter schools, as mentioned in the NY Times, which is twice as much as they’re paying for new public schools.

The XQ Institute, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, focuses on questionable “competency-based learning” and spent a boatload of money on promoting itself, first via a flashy 2017 TV prime-time special, replete with celebrity performances, and then unsuccessfully pitching the show to be nominated for an Emmy via a national bus tour.

The press release describes the XQ Institute as “a national leader in transformational high school design…Based on research and expert practice.” Yet the schools that the Institute has helped launch so far have not had an impressive record of success. Four of the first ten high schools that were awarded $10 million each by XQ in their 2016 “Super School” competition either never opened, failed to expand as planned, or have already closed.

In addition, one of the schools awarded $2.5 million in a second round of funding , Crosstown, a new high school in Memphis, experienced a student walk-out in protest against how the tenth grade was separated into two cohorts; one composed of mostly white students and the other black students, with the first group provided with extra attention. Just last week, the school lost its principal for the second time since it opened last year.

Over the last decade or so, the Robin Hood Foundation has primarily supported charter schools in its education portfolio, as might be predicted considering it was founded by CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Imagine schools: corporate-style reform rearing its head once again

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments: Reading and Writing Beyond Gilead | radical eyes for equity

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments: Reading and Writing Beyond Gilead | radical eyes for equity

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments: Reading and Writing Beyond Gilead

Becka said that spelling was not reading: reading, she said, was when you could hear the words as if they were a song. (p. 297)

The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

“How did Gilead fall?” Margaret Atwood asks in the Acknowledgements, noting that The Testaments, set 15 years after the main action of The Handmaid’s Tale but drafted 30-plus years after that novel, “was written in response to this question” (p. 417).

Even a writer of Atwood’s talent and success probably could never have imagined that Handmaid has become the cultural and political touchstone that has occurred with the rise of Trump and the popular Hulu series.

Those who found Handmaid in the late 1980s to be powerful then and an extremely compelling work of fiction may be skeptical about Atwood’s very late return to this now modern classic. For both the newly converted and the long-time fans of Atwood, I want to assure you all that this much delayed sequel pays off quite wonderfully.

I came to Atwood as a teacher—specifically high school Advanced Placement Literature and Composition—and then as a scholar. I have also grounded a tremendous amount of my academic and public work in Atwood’s fiction and non-fiction.

With efforts here, then, to avoid as much as possible spoilers, I want to highlight a few of the ways in which Atwood maintains elements from CONTINUE READING: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments: Reading and Writing Beyond Gilead | radical eyes for equity

Special Education in DC Schools – Education Town Hall Forum

Special Education in DC Schools – Education Town Hall Forum

SPECIAL EDUCATION IN DC SCHOOLS

The October 10 Education Town Hall show will feature a discussion of the state of special education in DC’s publicly funded schools with three local experts and advocates. DC has a long history of troubled and inequitable special education services, which the June 2019 annual letter from the Department of Education highlights, including abiding by the provisions of the IDEA law as well as unlicensed special education providers in charter schools. Our guests will outline the problems as well as some solutions going forward.

Listen at 11 a.m. EASTERN on Thursday, October 10, via TuneIn or by visiting We Act Radio and clicking on arrow at upper left (NOTE: Not all “listen” buttons are working at present).

Guests:

–Dr. Chioma Oruh, DCPS parent and parent advocate with Advocates for Justice and Education, a DC nonprofit helping families with special needs children receive appropriate education services.

–Latisha Chisholm, social worker and manager of the Connected Schools initiative at Anacostia high school.

–Jackie Pinkney-Hackett, former DCPS parent of a student with special needs. Former, Director of Parent and Community Involvement for the Deputy Mayor of Education. She has worked as a Consultant for the DCPS Special Education Call Center and served on the following committees: Mayor’s State Advisory Panel for Special Education (SAP) (’05-’08); High Quality Teaching and Learning Committee (SAP), Chair (’05-’08); D.C. State Transition Team for Students with Disabilities (’05-’08); DCPS Parent Resource Centers Planning Committee (’06-’07); D.C. Education Compact, Parent Sector (’05-’07); D.C. State Enforcement and Investigation Division Parent Advisory Council (’05-’07). She is currently a Disability & Educational Advocate.

Special Education in DC Schools – Education Town Hall Forum

Monday, October 7, 2019

CURMUDGUCATION: What Is A Chief Innovation Officer? (And Does Your District Need A Proactive Change Agent Visionary Leader To Transform Your Human Capital With Capacity-Building Systems?)

CURMUDGUCATION: What Is A Chief Innovation Officer? (And Does Your District Need A Proactive Change Agent Visionary Leader To Transform Your Human Capital With Capacity-Building Systems?)

What Is A Chief Innovation Officer? (And Does Your District Need A Proactive Change Agent Visionary Leader To Transform Your Human Capital With Capacity-Building Systems?)

My college job was in the private sector, working in the education and communication department of an industrial manufacturing company. In ways that my college education could never hope to, my time there drove home how there are plenty of folks making a good living using language to obscure rather than reveal, the there's a whole art of using language to try to convey importance and weight while cloaking the actual content of those words with smoke and mirrors. On the one hand, it's appalling, like watching someone use the Mona Lisa to scrub the grime off their car. On the other hand, it's its own kind of hilarious language, a linguistic emperor's new clothes. We entertained ourselves by cranking out faux bulletins in corporate argle bargle; I actually have a bound collection of our best work.

I am reminded of all that when I read some of the corporate baloney unleashed on education (not that education doesn't have its own ridiculous jargon). Take, for instance, the new-ish corporate ed reform job of Chief Innovation Officer. Right off the bat, we know this is corporate-style baloney, because of the desire to signal this is a Real Important Job by making it C-level with a Chief in front. The whole trend of turning school administration jobs into "chief" jobs is about "translating" education-speak into corporate-speak.

The Center for Digital Education offered its own balonified exercise in explaining CIOs in 2013; you know from the very first paragraph it's going to be richly foolish:

Chief innovation officers are slowly popping up in school districts around the country. Some say CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: What Is A Chief Innovation Officer? (And Does Your District Need A Proactive Change Agent Visionary Leader To Transform Your Human Capital With Capacity-Building Systems?)

THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOL ASSOCIATION FOR PROFIT PARASITES

https://ccsa.force.com/apex/VendorBase

THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOL ASSOCIATION FOR PROFIT PARASITES

Find a Vendor

(PICK-A-PARA$ITE)

A $ervice for CC$A member $chool$

School leadership disaster: Private companies work an insider game to reap lucrative contracts | Salon.com - https://www.salon.com/2019/09/20/school-leadership-disaster-private-companies-work-an-insider-game-to-reap-lucrative-contracts_partner/

https://ccsa.force.com/apex/VendorBase

Why Middle School and Preteens Are So Challenging - The Atlantic

Why Middle School and Preteens Are So Challenging - The Atlantic

Why Is Middle School So Hard for So Many People?
It doesn’t have to be this way.

Middle school. The very memory of it prompts disgust. Here’s a thing no one’s thinking: Geez, I wish I still looked the way I did when I was 12. Middle school is the worst.

Tweenhood, which starts around age 9, is horrifying for a few reasons. For one, the body morphs in weird and scary ways. Certain parts expand faster than others, sometimes so fast that they cause literal growing pains; hair grows in awkward locations, often accompanied by awkward smells. And many kids face new schools and a new set of rules for how to act, both socially and academically.

But middle school doesn’t have to be like this. It could be okay. It could be good, even. After all, middle schoolers are “kind of the best people on Earth,” says Mayra Cruz, the principal of Oyster-Adams Bilingual School, a public middle school in Washington, D.C.

The notion that middle school deserves its own educational ecosystem at all dates back to the 1960s, with a campaign to better accommodate the specific learning needs of children ages 10 to 16. The movement drew from the work of two psychologists, writes Phyllis Fagell in her new book, Middle School Matters—a movement prompted partially by a quest to strip intermediary grades of their “Jan Brady” syndrome, and by the sense that they were overlooked as the middle child of the K–12 family, an afterthought or a means to an end.

Take the massive variation in grade figurations. Some middle schools are combined on a single campus with their elementary- or high-school peers; most are siloed institutions grouped into two, three, or four grades—or just one. Starting a new school in middle school—a common experience for many students—can be devastating. That’s in large part because of how important social currency is at this age—starting school on a brand-new campus with unfamiliar people is bound to upend kids’ existing popularity hierarchies.

[Read: Being in middle school is like ‘trying to build a parachute as you’re falling’]

A 2016 American Educational Research Association study of 90,000 students in New York City, for example, found that one’s status as a “top dog” has the most CONTINUE READING: Why Middle School and Preteens Are So Challenging - The Atlantic

Vanquishing the Windigo: Standing Up to Marc Tucker and Digital Capitalism – Wrench in the Gears

Vanquishing the Windigo: Standing Up to Marc Tucker and Digital Capitalism – Wrench in the Gears

Vanquishing the Windigo: Standing Up to Marc Tucker and Digital Capitalism

I’ve embarked on some intense Internet peregrinations lately, and work has been super busy. But it keeps me grounded in the real, physical world for which I am eternally grateful. It is captivating, full of generous people and natural wonders. It’s worth fighting to protect, which is why I continue to wander and try to share the information I stumble over along the way.

I’m excited to finally have a free weekend to write. I feel a growing sense of urgency as I connect with more and more folks across the country. Alaska, California, Utah, Illinois, North Dakota, Oklahoma…the pressure is intensifying, everywhere. If these thoughts seem somewhat scattered, bear with me. This is more an exercise in unburdening than some of my other posts.

Our current education system, admittedly far from perfect, is in the process of being dismantled. Its replacement? Digitally mediated, “lifelong learning,” workforce-aligned pathways. They’re being pitched in Colorado and Washington State as the “Swiss Model.” Other states are seeing the emergence of Markle Foundation-funded Skillful initiatives. Then there’s the normalization of gamified behavioral compliance tied to digital economic incentives paralleling this transformation.

Frighteningly, it appears education settings from P-20 are being set up to train future generations to accept and participate in the construction of STEM-centric worlds steeped in cyber-security. No hard hats required, just an up to date eyeglass prescription. Everyone expected to do their part to build and secure these new “worlds.” No one spared, not even preschoolers.

We must understand the nature of worlds built in code.

They will exist as augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality.

They will be digitized, data-rich, and surveilled.

They will come with embedded nudges imposed by algorithms.

They will become automated, eventually beyond human control.

These are worlds where CONTINUE READING: Vanquishing the Windigo: Standing Up to Marc Tucker and Digital Capitalism – Wrench in the Gears

Five Signs Your Reform Has Become Another Education Fad - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

Five Signs Your Reform Has Become Another Education Fad - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

Five Signs Your Reform Has Become Another Education Fad

I've long been the skunk at the garden party when it comes to folks cheerfully regaling one another with happy tales of wondrous schools, districts, and instructional programs. After all, I'm the guy who couldn't get stoked about No Child Left Behind or small high schools or the Race to the Top or the teacher-evaluation binge or the Common Core. Of course, that's all old news. The party is now filled with talk of social and emotional learning, career and technical education, "equitable" programming, early childhood, and such.

I've written before about how these new enthusiasms risk repeating the mistakes that helped turn earlier reforms from sensible efforts into self-defeating fads. In response, more than a few readers have reached out with a version of: "OK, I get it. But how can you tell when an effort is just building healthy momentum—and when it's at risk of turning into a fad?"

It's a great question. While I fear that I don't have a great answer, school reforms tend to stand or fall based on how they're experienced by parents and teachers. The problem for many reforms is that champions wind up imagining that teachers and parents are on board long before they really are.

Making allies of parents and teachers requires getting them on board, which means slowly making them believe that this stuff really works. Among other things, this requires reformers to protect their handiwork from shady vendors, wacky allies, unrealistic hype, and goofy practices—all of which can be hard to do. It's doubly so when reformers are riding high and don't want to create unnecessary conflict. That means reformers can find their handiwork defined by its worst excesses.

So, what are the warning signs that a reform is at risk of being undone? Here are five:

The Vendor Onslaught: Perhaps the earliest sign, but one visible only to those paying close attention, is the way that vendors of all sorts start to bombard school systems, journalists, and any perceived "influencer" with their wares. Vendors who had previously shown little interest in X will CONTINUE READING: Five Signs Your Reform Has Become Another Education Fad - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

Ohio GM Strikers Say They Were Inspired by Teachers' Strike at Local School – Payday Report

Ohio GM Strikers Say They Were Inspired by Teachers' Strike at Local School – Payday Report

Ohio GM Strikers Say They Were Inspired by Teachers’ Strike at Local School

AFT President Randi Weingarten walks the GM picket line in Parma, Ohio.

BY: MIKE ELK OCTOBER 6, 2019

PARMA, OHIO – “Hey guys, I’m Randi,” says American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten as she introduce herself to a GM worker as she walks the picket line at GM’s Parma facility.

Over the last year, Weingarten has been no stranger to picket lines; helping to lead a wave of teachers’ strikes across the United States t which surprised many with their mass public support.

A decade ago, the teachers’ unions in the U.S. were vilified by Republicans and even some Democrats for their union-won benefits and protections. Similarly, auto workers’ unions were vilified by both Democrats and Republicans alike during the auto bailout for their pensions and quality healthcare.

“Instead of people rising up and working together to change the power dynamics, there was this race to the bottom,” says Weingarten.”I used to call it pension envy. Instead of people saying, ‘Oh, we should all have a pension,’ [it was] ‘how come they have a pension instead of us.’”

However, now a decade later, something has changed as striking teachers and striking auto workers have received mass support throughout the United States.

“The narrative has changed–unions are cool again,” says Weingarten.

Weingarten says that workers taking action helped to change the conversation in the United States.

“When people start seeing the courage of one’s conviction and particularly when they see people that CONTINUE READING: Ohio GM Strikers Say They Were Inspired by Teachers' Strike at Local School – Payday Report

Los Angeles: Michael Kohlhaas Explains How Charter Lobby Neutralized the LAUSD Inspector General | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Michael Kohlhaas Explains How Charter Lobby Neutralized the LAUSD Inspector General | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Michael Kohlhaas Explains How Charter Lobby Neutralized the LAUSD Inspector General

Working with his treasure trove of emails among charter operators, which he obtained via a public records request, blogger Michael Kohlhaas explains how the Charter Lobby managed to reduce the powers of the Office of Inspector General, whose investigations into corrupt charters had been a thorn in their side.

This is an important post. Read it in full. The charter lobby dedicates a lot of time and money to avoiding accountability and transparency.

He begins:

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a particularly powerful oversight office, the Office of the Inspector General, known in the trade jargon as OIG. And in 2018 the School Board failed to renew then-IG Ken Bramlett’s contract. According to LA Times education reporter Howard Blume, pro-charter board members Monica Garcia, Kelly Gonez, and Nick Melvoin voted against renewal, which was enough to deadlock the board and prevent Bramlett’s return. Blume also noted that Bramlett had aggressively investigated some charter schools, in some cases leading to criminal charges being filed, and CONTINUE READING: Los Angeles: Michael Kohlhaas Explains How Charter Lobby Neutralized the LAUSD Inspector General | Diane Ravitch's blog

glen brown: “The Chicago teachers want school nurses, social workers and librarians” by Mary Richie

glen brown: “The Chicago teachers want school nurses, social workers and librarians” by Mary Richie

“The Chicago teachers want school nurses, social workers and librarians” by Mary Richie

Today’s paper [October 6^th] indicates that the Chicago teachers want school nurses, social workers and librarians. I often wondered whether a school nurse was necessary in River Forest and when ours retired and was not replaced, I figured we didn't.

Then along came a skinny little girl with unkempt hair to my third-grade classroom. There were a few rundown frame homes in south River Forest that the owner rented out to employees. This youngster's mother had run away, leaving her husband in a coup with a passel of kids.

My little charge had many problems, but the one most disturbing to the running of my classroom was that she would leave a trail of "turds" (feces) in the classroom much to the dismay of her prim and proper classmates.

I bought her clean underwear and arranged for her to change in the old nurse's office, and then deposit the soiled underpants in plastic bags that were there for her use in the same drawer. Well, one day she felt that she didn't want me to know she had soiled herself again so she flushed the cotton pants down the toilet causing it to, of course, over flow!

She grew to love me and, of course, she received lots of my attention. I realized that the child had a real artistic talent and with her father's permission took her to the Chicago Art Institute one Saturday. She loved it all but was especially taken by a CONTINUE READING: glen brown: “The Chicago teachers want school nurses, social workers and librarians” by Mary Richie

Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, October 8, 2019